Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system thermal management, and more particularly to information handling system dynamic acoustical management.
Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continue to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems are typically built from a variety of components that are assembled into a housing. Many of the components run on electrical power and generate heat as a byproduct of power consumption. One example is the central processing unit (CPU), which consumes greater amounts of power under increased processing loads and also produces greater amounts of thermal energy as power consumption increases. Typically, the CPU generates the greatest amount of thermal energy in an information handling system housing, however, other components also contribute in varying degrees under different operating conditions. Generally, information handling systems use a cooling fan to remove the excess thermal energy from the housing. Temperature sensors in the housing measure thermal conditions so that a cooling fan controller runs a cooling fan at a speed that is adequate to maintain components within thermal parameters. Failure to maintain components within thermal parameters can result in component failure. If a cooling fan runs at full speed and still cannot maintain the housing temperature within thermal parameters, components within the housing will enter a reduced power consumption mode to reduce the amount of thermal energy that they generate, such as throttling of the CPU to run at a slower clock speed.
As the feature sets available for use in information handling systems increase in capabilities and power consumption, such as increased speeds for CPU, memory and graphics systems, increasingly powerful cooling fans have been included in information handling system housings to provide improved thermal transfer with more rapid cooling airflows. One difficulty with the use of more powerful cooling fans is that housings have tended to shrink in size as processing components have increased in power so that more powerful fans still struggle to generate adequate cooling airflow in housings that have greater impedance to airflow. An associated difficulty is that high cooling airflows in high impedance housings tend to have relatively large acoustical signatures. A large acoustical signature is particularly problematic when an information handling system is located in close proximity to an end user and placed under a heavy processing load. In many systems, running a cooling fan at higher speeds may allow better CPU performance, such as increased time in a turbo mode, but performance benefits and corresponding power and acoustic penalties due to higher fan speeds may far outweigh the performance benefits.